The World’s End – Film Review

It has felt like a long wait for The World’s End, the third film directed by Edgar Wright, produced by Nira Park and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, in a series loosely characterised as “genres the British don’t often do, done in a very British way”. The World’s End is also the weakest film of the three, but that’s not to say it isn’t good fun for your money.

Gary King (Pegg) is a man who, numerically at least, is in his forties. However, in his head he’s still 18. The World’s End is absolutely steeped in late 80s/early 90s nostalgia, with a soundtrack loaded with Blur, Happy Mondays, James, The Stone Roses and, incredibly, Soup Dragons. Gary King still plays the mix tape his friend, Steven (the always wonderful Paddy Considine), made for him when they were teenagers because in his last days of school Gary was popular, invincible and had the world at his feet. Now an alcoholic clinging to his glory days, nothing is going to make him grow up.

Except maybe, just maybe, he will if he manages to complete the Golden Mile: a pub crawl of the 12 pubs in his hometown. Gary dates his adult failures back to when he and his four friends bailed from the crawl at pub nine and is now determined to fix his mistakes. He goes back to those four friends, Andy (Frost), Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver “O-man” (Martin Freeman) and Steven, now with adult lives they seem perfectly happy with, and convinces them to go back to Newton Haven with him to complete what they started. Joining them is Rosamund Pike as Sam, Oliver’s sister and Gary’s one-time shag. Getting in the way of this quest is the small matter of an attempted alien invasion.

For those not familiar with the so-called Cornetto Trilogy, each film takes the form of a buddy comedy accompanied by over-the-top action. The preceding film, a cop action flick called Hot Fuzz, was released over six years ago. Shaun of the Dead, a zombie film, appeared on screen three years before that. And the television series that kickstarted it all off, Spaced, started airing on Channel 4 in 1999. I recorded each episode (on VHS!) to watch after I got home from drinking in the pub on Friday nights with my teenage friends. My entire adult life has been peppered with Wright-Pegg-Frost offerings and if any review is going to date me, it’s this one.

I mention this because just like Hot Fuzz did back in 2007, The World’s End carried a lot of expectation. The difference is that while HF surpassed my expectations; TWE failed to meet them. However, if TWE had followed Shaun of the Dead, I probably would have been pleased. Not thrilled and certainly not desperate to go right back into the cinema and watch it again, but I would have been satisfied. This is because TWE is essentially Shaun but with a much bigger budget. It’s funny, shows off some good action sequences and strong lead performances but has absolutely no plot and lacks a lot of the charm of Shaun. What TWE has gained in special effects, it has lost in emotional resonance. Although the flashbacks to the teenage gang are quite endearing.

What The World’s End also lacks are any truly stand-out moments. I am struggling to think of anything that had the same sense of fun as Shaun and Ed throwing vinyl at zombies, or the same whole-cinema-gasps-out-loud factor as Nicholas Angel knocking out an old lady with a flying kick. What it does have are some unexpected turns, a lot of laughs and too many lengthy monologues. Nick Frost puts in a sympathetic performance as the long-suffering Andy, Gary’s best friend back in the day and it’s fun to identify the recurring actors from the previous films: there’s probably a drinking game in spotting them. You’ll also get Wright’s manic, eye-popping direction and the running gags are a delight. Yet Simon Pegg should probably stick to playing nice guys. Not once did I believe Gary’s motivations.

The World’s End will keep you entertained and it steams by pretty quickly for its running time but as Gary King keeps pushing his friends to continue his quest to complete the Golden Mile, the reasons for complying, and the plot, get thinner. It’s been a brilliant ride but no more Cornettos please*; it’s time to grow up.

*I don’t mean this literally. If anyone wants to send me some mint Cornettos this summer, I will happily take them up on it.

The World’s End – Trailer

The Cornetto Trilogy is nearly complete. The journey started in 2004 with Shaun of the Dead which introduced the zom-rom-com. Then in 2007 we got Hot Fuzz which took Midsomer Murders and filtered it through Tarantino’s brain. Now after Simon Pegg’s detours with aliens in Paul and Star Trek and Edgar Wright blowing my mind with Scott Pilgrim we are only two months away from the July 19th release of The World’s End.

And there’s a trailer at last!

From the looks of things we are dealing with an alien invasion during a pub crawl. So far there is no sign of a cornetto but we do have the classic fence jump. Visually the film reminds me more of Scott Pilgrim than Shaun or Fuzz and there’s a hint of Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block too.

Colour me excited. Whatever that means.

Movie Maths with Edgar Wright and Chums

Therefore

PLEASE NOTE: All films deliberately chosen to prove whatever point I was trying to make

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol – Review

We recently attended the UK premiere of the upcoming spy-fi action extravaganza, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and we’ll be frank: it is awesome. Okay, we tell a lie, the premiere that Tom Cruise et al attended was at another cinema the same evening, but that part about the film being awesome? Deadly accurate.

Ghost Protocol sees Ethan Hunt (Cruise) in a dark place. He is no longer with his beloved wife, he is locked up in a brutal Russian prison and the IMF (Impossible Missions Force – duh) has just been framed for exploding the Moscow Kremlin, driving military tensions higher than those during the Cold War. In order to clear the IMF’s name as a terrorist group and the United States as a reckless child with nuclear warheads, Ethan and his co-disavowees must uncover and foil a globally devastating plot.

The Mission: Impossible series of films are a consistent bunch in that they all (well, maybe not M:I 2) feature relevant, complex plots with a heavy dose of sexy and stunning action – which permits the spectator to gloss over and forget their own mundane lives; allowing them to believe in an utterly dangerous and OTT world of spy action.

Director, Brad Bird (The Simpsons, The Incredibles) has gone out of his way to create the meticulous Ghost Protocol, applying his animated past’s pedantic creativity to constantly keep us thoroughly engaged. Of course, he also had help from the methodical writings of André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum: veteran scribes on producer JJ Abrams’ spy-fi show, Alias.

For once, and similar to the original television series, Ghost Protocol does its best to create a tight-knit group of characters rather than focusing entirely on Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, adding a certain level of intimacy that was lacking in the previous films. Albeit man-boobed, Cruise is again on top form, going so far as realizing his own stunts dangling a mile above earth on the Burj Khalifa; Jeremy Renner captures all with his stubborn and secretive Brandt; and Simon Pegg only cements his US mainstream success as nerd Benji, whose British humour creates the majority of the film’s most awesome moments. Aside from the sexiness of Pegg, there is plenty of female beauty to fall back on to as well with the powerfully dominant Paula Patton and assassin seductress Lea Seydoux.

To truly capture the size of Ghost Protocol, see it on the biggest screen you can find as Brad Bird has defied all with his first live action blockbuster. Even when you question the film – like, ‘how does Ethan survive four car crashes when I wimp out over a paper cut?’; the disavowing of Ethan’s marriage is sure to upset many (although, Bird and co work around that excellently *taps nose*); and some of the CGI is just staggeringly bad – you will enjoy the film far too much to even think about those kinds of hair-splitting idiosyncrasies. Plus, Tom Cruise once again fills his obligatory running quota so it can’t be all that bad, right? Right.

*hums Mission: Impossible theme whilst purchasing a ticket to see the film again*

The Adventures of Tintin – Trailer Dissection

There are a lot of things to get excited about with the upcoming, Spielberg-directed, Tintin film. Getting us jumping about is that the scriptwriting credits read like the ultimate Mild Concern wish list: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish were all tasked with stringing three of Hergé’s books into one film. That’s two trios of awesome right there. Then move down to the cast, bursting with Great British talent: you’ve got Gollum, James Bond, Billy Elliot and Westley (or Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell and Cary Elwes, if you’re fussy about your actors’ names.)

But we have fears too. There’s the obvious worry that no film could do justice to the original Tintin books, or even the (classic) animated series. Then there’s the hyper-realistic, motion-capture animation, which had me examining the trailer expecting the same creepy vibe I got off The Polar Express. Check out my conclusions, and other uninformed comments, after the jump.

Paul – Review

Last November we were lucky enough to see an early cut of the new film Paul. We reviewed the film but within a day had received two take-down requests so did the decent thing and took the review down. At the time we were promised invites to a press screening of the film so that we could review it properly but as that has failed to materialise we’re going to republish our review. Bear in mind that we saw the unfinished film and all manner of things may have changed in the meantime.

Pegg and Frost play two friends who follow up a visit to Comic Con with a trip around America’s alien hotspots. Along the way they meet Paul, a foul-mouthed and brilliantly rendered alien voiced by Seth Rogan, who is on the run from the government. Along the way they pick up Kristin Wiig in the form of a crazy Christian and end up persued by her even crazier father. They are also chased by some rednecks with almost no consequence, it’s that kind of film.

On the whole Paul is great, very funny and lighthearted, and while the humour is normally broad and often relies on alien Paul saying or doing something rude never really resorts to pure toilet humour. In fact Seth Rogan as Paul was surprisingly funny and restrained.

The film felt like a more old fashioned comedy with the leads gradually gathering various people chasing them, a bit of romance between Wiig and Pegg, and of course the now standard bromance between Frost and Pegg.

The film’s main weaknesses lay in two of the characters who appear only briefly. Sigourney Weaver’s role was presented as a big reveal despite her having very little to do and featuring heavily in the production blogs. She did get one of the biggest laughs in the film though so who am I to complain?

Blythe Danner’s character was another that was all pay-off and no set up. The emotional resonance of the climax of her storyline fell a bit flat when we were only told her back-story in a quick bit of exposition rather than shown it properly.

Bill Hader, Joe Lo Truglio and Jason Bateman were all great as secret agents, and Jane Lynch’s small role as the waitress at a UFO themed cafe was a real highlight.

Paul does suffer from the lack of Edgar Wright, and is nothing compared to the Cornetto Trilogy, but a few unnecessary parts aside is a lot of harmless fun and Greg Mottola does a good job at directing. I’m willing to look past the bizarre bit of Christianity bashing that could genuinely offend some.

After the film we were asked to filled out a survey and I selected “Would definitely recommend” so do go and see Paul when it is released on 14th February 2011.

10 points if you spott Scott Pilgrim.

Burke and Hare, The Tempest and PA 2: Tokyo Night – Trailers

So many trailers I want to share with you there no time to get into details. We’ll start with The Tempest which has been waiting for release for a year and still hasn’t got a UK date yet. I’m excited because of felicity Jones and wary because of Helen Mirren.

Next up Burke and Hare the new John Landis comedy starring SImon Pegg and Andy Serkis, looks fun if a little slapstick.